Frederick William MacMonnies

Frederick William MacMonnies (1863-1937), was the best known expatriate American sculptor of the Beaux-Arts school, as successful and lauded in France as he was in the United States.

He was also a highly accomplished painter and portraitist.

He was born in Brooklyn Heights, Brooklyn, New York and died in New York City.

Three of MacMonnies' best-known sculptures are Nathan Hale, Bacchante and Infant Faun and Diana.

Pioneer Monument by Frederick William MacMonnies (detail)

Sherree Valentine Daines, 1956 | Modern Impressionist painter

Sherree Valentine Daines was born in Effingham, Surrey. She was not always an artist, at 18 she began work as a legal secretary in London. Realising the quality of the idle sketches she drew on her legal pads, it became clear that she had a talent for drawing.

Valentine Daines studied fine art at Epsom School of Art for 4 years, leaving in 1980. It was during her time at art school that she developed an interest in painting figures.

After graduating, she spent the first summer in Cornwall, painting villages, harbours and beaches and most of all the people. She has also been known to paint the busy streets of London, especially showing passers by hailing cabs, looking around markets or leaving the theatre.

Lord Frederic Leighton | Victorian-era painter

Frederic Leighton, Baron Leighton, also called Sir Frederic Leighton, Baronet (born Dec. 3, 1830, Scarborough, Yorkshire, Eng.-died Jan. 25, 1896, London), academic painter of immense prestige in his own time.

After an education in many European cities, he went to Rome in 1852, where his social talents won him the friendship of (among others) the English novelist William Makepeace Thackeray, the French novelist George Sand, and the English poet Robert Browning.

Leighton’s painting Cimabue’s Madonna, shown at the Royal Academy’s exhibition in 1855, was bought by Queen Victoria.

Berit Hildre, 1964 | Figurative sculptor

Berit Hildre is a self-taught artist, born in Aalesund, in Norway.

For Berit Hildre, the vocation is late, it is born from his meeting with the painter Louis Tresseras with whom she lives today in France.

- "I'm a Norwegian. Twenty years ago, I left my country to travel. I met Louis on Crete. I began to model the earth, just to try. I continued for pleasure" - Bérit

This exceptional sculptor offers us all the innocence of childhood.

Her delicate and graceful little girls and girls embody the state of grace that is childhood, but also its fragility.

Patrice Murciano, 1969 | New Pop Art

French painter and sculptor Patrice Murciano has had a huge rise to fame because of his amazing and very different creative style.

Murciano was born in Belfort and then moved to Montpellier when very young.

He discovered his passion for art at an early age when he started reproducing characters from comics when he was 6 years old.

At the age of 8, he borrowed his mother’s makeup to draw portraits and female figures.

Jane DeDecker, 1961 | Figurative sculptor

Jane DeDecker has been sculpting the human figure for over thirty-five years. She seeks to capture moments that reveal truths about the human condition, that, when stripped down to their essence, are understood intrinsically.

As a figurative sculptor, she communicates emotional experience through lyrical compositions that move the viewer.

DeDecker’s sculptures stop life in mid-sentence - somewhere between inhaling and exhaling - and gives it form. She tells a story through the simple moments that imprint our lives and define us.

Il cimitero monumentale di Staglieno

The Cimitero monumentale di Staglieno is an extensive monumental cemetery located on a hillside in the district of Staglieno of Genoa, Italy, famous for its monumental sculpture. Covering an area of more than a square kilometre, it is one of the largest cemeteries in Europe.

History

The design of the cemetery of the City of Genoa dates back to Napoleon's Edict of Saint-Cloud from 1804, when he forbade burials in churches and towns.

The original project was approved in 1835 by the City's architect Carlo Barabino (1768-1835). However, he died the same year as a result of the cholera epidemic that struck the city and the project passed to his assistant and pupil Giovanni Battista Resasco (1798-1871).

Alda Merini / Camille Claudel | Smile woman / Sorridi donna

Camille Claudel | The Mature Age, 1913 (detail) | Claudel room at the Musée Rodin in Paris

Sorridi donna

sorridi sempre alla vita

anche se lei non ti sorride

Sorridi agli amori finiti

sorridi ai tuoi dolori